I stopped to help a woman who was dy//ing on the side of the road and lost my job because I arrived late

“That’s good.”

She looked at me for several seconds.

Then she did something nobody in that room expected.

She hugged me.

Not politely.

Not ceremonially.

She wrapped both arms around me like someone embracing family after years apart.

“You stayed with me,” she whispered.

I remembered kneeling beside her on wet gravel.

Her breathing had become shallow.

Her fingers were ice cold.

I had called emergency services, loosened her scarf, kept her talking, and followed instructions from the dispatcher while waiting for paramedics.

At one point she had grabbed my wrist and said, “Don’t let me close my eyes.”

So I hadn’t.

I talked about my daughters.

Baseball, even though I barely watched baseball.

The ridiculous parking situation at my office.

Anything that kept her responding.

“You did what anyone should have done,” I said quietly.

She pulled back.

“No.”

Her voice hardened.

“You did what everyone should have done.”